Client: LifeCare Pharmacy, a foremost retail pharmacy stores chain of Bahrain and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia seeking pharmacy management software.

Use Case: Client has pharmacies located in multiple Lulu Hypermarket Malls. Each location was running independent software with no synchronization with head office. Accounting and inventory was managed manually leading to extra workload on staff and management.

Primary Objective: Deploy ERPNext for managing all outlets from one location, synchronize sales, inventory and accounts. Automate purchase process and minimize accounting entries to bare minimum.

Client background

Our client operates retail pharmacies in 6 Lulu Hypermarket malls of Bahrain. As each outlet had independent software daily sales had to be collated manually. Inventory deduction was also not centralized hence each branch had to create items requisition manually.

The head office would then manually combine all items requisition, filter it by supplier and then make a purchase order to the supplier. This would take any time from an hour or two depending on the number of items requested.

Accounts team had additional workload of adding sales of each branch with VAT into head office software. VAT calculation and profitability per outlet was not always accurate.

Stock counting was also a very tedious as there was no ready available current inventory available. Medicine batch and expiry management was not possible due to limitation of the software or the process.

The Solution, pharmacy management software

We deployed ERPNext for managing all aspects of the business right from point of sales, purchase, stock, accounts and VAT. Cost centers (each outlet) was created and assigned a dedicated ledger for stock valuation.

Purchase Process

Daily each location creates a material request for fresh items within the software. The head office collates all the information on click of button. A purchase order against a supplier is made and all materials request of each branch are automatically added it. If multiple branches have order similar items then the item is added as on item in the purchase order by the system.

Upon receiving the goods the system tracks payment as per the credit facility allowed by supplier that has been inserted into system

Sales Process

Each branch has independent point of sales system. However, data is automatically synchronized in the software a set frequency. During transfer of information tax invoice is created with appropriate VAT applied, ledger entries, items deducted from the outlets inventory and asset value reduced. They system also passes ledger entries for cash or other mode of payments. Sales information is in real-time hence head office has complete information of sales, cash value and inventory.

We deployed our in-house developed pharmacy application that has all requirements of Bahrain National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA). Medicines are tracked as per their batch and expiry from purchase to sales.

Accounting

At the heart of system is the accounting module. It keeps track of purchase and sales. As the accounting module is based on IFRS accounts department is able to use it for all business operation. In-depth reports are easily generated and on click of a button the company’s financial health is displayed.

Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet can be drilled down per branch. Accounts Payable and Receivable reports assists in managing cash flow. Credit facilities per supplier is concise. Item valuation that includes all indirect cost derives very accurate profitability per item.

Bahrain VAT

The system calculates the VAT automatically. User is able produce VAT report as per NBR layout. The VAT filing calculation process has been reduced from days to just few minutes.

Reports

Multiple reports were created to ease understanding of business. Now each branch profitability can be pulled in just couple of clicks. Reports are used to understand sales volume, peak time, items consumption and commission calculation.

The Result

All workflow were streamlined that reduced many manual man-hours. Management gets data in real-time and is able to take strategic quick decision. Our retail pharmacy management software has helped the client in streamlining almost all aspects of business, getting near real-time data, increasing profitability, increase in staff productivity, transparency and reduced risk of theft of inventory.

Overall, our pharmacy management software has been above customer expectation and is very happy with the return on investment into an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software.